If you have eyes, you’re able to look across your room and identify the objects that are familiar to you. You can recognize your laptop, phone, desk and everything else that you own.

The same applies for visual search. The difference is the image is uploaded on the computer, and the image itself is used to perform a search query.

Its important to note that visual search is different from image search. The latter is used to find images based on text. For example, you type “Starbucks lattes” and click search to find pictures on Google Images. The computer doesn’t use the image itself to find the image, instead it uses structured data associated with the file.

Meanwhile, visual search relies on the image itself to conduct a query. Imagine taking a picture of the shoes of your friend. With a visual search tool, you can find the name of the product, where it can be bought, the sizes available and product reviews, based on the image file alone.

Here’s an example of a visual search via Pinterest Lens:

The app can identify the items in the image such as the coffee table, décor and living room.

For the uninitiated, Pinterest Lens is a mobile app that uses a smartphone’s camera to recognize physical objects and find related items on Pinterest. After that, it presents a series of tags that can be associated with the image.

The social media giant also introduced its Shop the Look feature, which makes items in pins appear as products that people can shop. Products are identified with a blue circle. Users can find information about these products and tap an image to buy it. Clothing brands such as Macy’s, Target and Wayfair have used this feature to sell their products online.

Google Lens works in the same way. It uses your smartphone camera to identify additional information on the image. For example, you can take a photo of a restaurant and find its name and star ratings in the Knowledge Panel.

So what’s the implication of visual search for the future?

Imagine seeing a picture of a resort or a pool and finding out where its located, reviews and prices. Imagine snapping a picture of a shoe in an ad, and being able to shop it.

How to Leverage Visual Search

Visual search is a relatively new technology, but there are a lot of ways you can prepare for it to get ahead in the game.

Visual search, like text-based search engines, rely on schema markup and metadata to find related images. This is why you should optimize your images so visual applications can easily find and recognize them.

Here’s some image optimization techniques you can use:

Add descriptive alt + text to images

Optimize images for mobile

Use targeted keywords to describe the title, caption and description of the image

Submit images to an image sitemap

Utilize appropriate schema markup for images

Set up images badges and run through structured data sets

Interested in how we can help you make the most of your online store? Digital Cake are Shopify experts, as an agency, we know what will help you be better online. Get in Touch

SEO Quick Wins – Things You Really Need to Know!

To succeed online, you need to be continuously educating yourself and adapting your website to adhere to the latest rules and regulations in the world of Google. However, not all SEO tactics and methods need to be outrageously difficult. There are in fact a number of quick fixes you can implement to your website that can have a positive effect on your SEO results. Here are 5 SEO quick wins you can work into your website right now.

1. Alt Tags

Alt tags are HTML attributes which are attached to image tags which will provide a text based alternative to the image for search engines. The concept is that you utilise your alt tag to describe the image, and the image will then be read by search engines. However, what many people don’t know is that optimising your alt tags is a super nifty way to help give your SEO a boost. If you utilise the alt tag function to describe the image but incorporate some relevant keywords, you’re adding your SEO keywords in a natural way. Of course, keyword stuffing is always discouraged, but utilising your alt tags appropriately is a great SEO quick win.

2. Create Longer Form Content

Long form content is a great way to boost your SEO results. Offering long form and informative content on the key pages of your website will help to create a more relevant resource for your users, informing them of everything they need to know and acting as a thorough guide for users. Google likes to display the most authoritative and relevant results for users, so ensuring your content is comprehensive could work in your favour when it comes to SEO.

3. Look for Easy Keyword Wins

Assessing your easy keyword wins could be the perfect way to boost your SEO, and something that you can do relatively quickly. Utilising tools like Open Site Explorer, SEMRush and Google Keyword Planner to identify keywords which settle around the top of page 2 or at the bottom of page 1 of Google will help you plan some simple targets to help boost most of your results on to the first page. Working on the low hanging fruit is a great way to increase your exposure and a solid and simple SEO strategy.

4. Optimise page title tags

Page title tags should be one of the first things you do when incorporating an SEO strategy into your website. However, thoroughly analysing your page title tags could be an SEO quick win for your ecommerce website. Ensure that you’re using the most appropriate keywords for each page, and that you’re incorporating the relevant and exciting keywords for your page text into the page title tags. It’s important to ensure your most important keywords match your most important pages, and that you’re targeting the most important keywords for each page.

SEO Quick Wins is one thing, but to really benefit from SEO results, you need to put in the time and money to get the results. If you’d like to discuss SEO further then please do not hesitate to contact us, drop us an email b3@apex-ecommerce.co.uk

SEO Myths

It’s imperative to keep on top of the SEO trends and Google algorithms to ensure your ecommerce website is keeping its head above water, but this can be incredibly difficult with so much contrasting information polluting the web on how to nail SEO. In this blog post we’ll aim to tackle some of the most common SEO myths to help you focus your efforts and improve your SEO.

SEO Myths 1 – Links are Absolutely Everything

Many moons ago, getting links to your website was the be-all and end-all for SEO. The more links coming in to your site, the higher your Google ranking was. Naturally, savvy digital marketers latched onto this concept and quickly starting flooding their sites with low quality links, opting for a quantity over quality approach and climbing the rankings as a result. The consequence was users were greeted with irrelevant and low-quality answers for their searches, and so Google cottoned on and changed the strategy. Whilst link building is an important element of any SEO strategy, quality simply must trump quantity every time, and Google is certainly clever enough to differentiate a well-placed, relevant link from a high-quality source from an unnatural link that adds no value for the audience. Build links based with quality, relevant and high-quality sources for your audience, and you will be rewarded accordingly.

SEO Myths 2 – You Can Pay for Good Google Rankings

Several SEO agencies will charge you through the roof with the promise of improved Google rankings. You’ll commonly see adverts for ‘£100 number 1 rankings’, and quite frankly, anyone promising anything of the sort will not offer you a good service. If only it were that simple to get to the top! Good organic search results come from hard work, patience and a solid SEO strategy that is monitored and adjusted accordingly. Your hard work will see you reap the rewards – but you have to work hard first!

SEO Myths 3 – The More Keywords the Better

It’s undeniable that keywords are an important part of any SEO strategy. You must be mindful of the keywords you’d like to target in order to monitor your success. Similarly, it’s important to ensure your relevant keywords are included on the corresponding pages of your site to ensure the desired pages are ranking for the correlating keywords. However, stuffing your keywords into your text left, right and centre is actually detrimental for your organic search results. Google is intelligent enough to determine whether or not your content is relevant and insightful in relation to a specific keyword, so when writing your body text, you need to focus on accuracy, information and relevance. What does your customer want to know? Make sure you’re focused on providing a solution for your customer – and Google will take care of the rest.

SEO is a minefield of misinformation and contradicting theories, and there are many different elements to perfect in order to improve your organic rankings. Sadly, there’s no magic formula or button to press to guarantee good results. You must rely on regular research, keep yourself informed and constantly monitor and adjust your on-site SEO accordingly.

Avoid these common SEO myths and you’ll be one step closer to great Google results!

What Makes Voice Search So Popular?

Personally, I find it faster and a lot more convenient. Whenever I need information, I don’t need to find it. Instead, I just use voice search and everything I need is available—in the blink of an eye. And it doesn’t take a genius to find out that this is the future.

One study found that 60 percent of users used voice search in the past six months. Northstar research found that 55 percent of teens used voice search everyday and roughly 20 percent of mobile searches are made by voice search. Consistent with these results, twenty five percent of Bing searches are voice searches. By 2020, Comscore estimates that voice search will account for half of all searches.

In another study, Google found that users rely on voice search to find local information. Teens and adults used voice search to ask for directions and find out movie times.

In other words, if you’re online store’s site isn’t optimized for voice search, then you’re missing out on a lot.

But how is voice search different from the usual text search? Instead of short keywords, users rely on long-tail keywords to make voice searchers. For example, people type “tourist spots New York” but people voice search “What are the tourist spots in New York?” As you can see, voice searches are typically in a question format and are 4.2. words longer than the average text query.

Voice searches can also determine the intent behind a question. When users asked questions with the words what, who, how and when, they’re interested. However, if they use the words “where” then they’re ready to act.

Since “where” is the question that signifies user intent, it also has a high local value. In fact, Google found that the voice search for “near me” doubled in 2015 alone. These voice searches may be something like, “Where is the nearest gas station near me?”, “Where is the best restaurant near me?” Since these searches are becoming a lot more common, then you might want to start targeting it.

How Can You Start Optimizing for Voice Search?

Be straight to the point: With voice search, users won’t hunt down your business’ hours, location or contact numbers. Rather, the basic information must be readily for crawlers, so Siri can answer the user’s question right away.

Create structured content: We’ve discussed previously that voice search often utilizes the Q&A format, so be sure to incorporate this format on your site’s content. Although another way you can improve site structure is to incorporate microdata and schema to give search engines more information about your business.

At the end of the day, consumers demand voice search. It’s therefore in your best interest to optimize your site’s content and information, to fit in with this trend.

The data suggests that if your company is ill-prepared to deal with an attack, then it’s time to increase your businesses’ cyber readiness. Whilst cyber attacks are unexpected, one way internet users can avoid it is to visit secure sites, which are typically characterized by their SSL certificate and HTTPS connection.

HTTPS Connection

HTTPS stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure , which is the secure version of HTTP. The connection is “secure” primarily because the communication between your browser and the site is encrypted.

HTTPS may seem familiar because it’s often used in online banking transactions and online shopping order forms. Safari, Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer often display a padlock icon to indicate that the site is an HTTPS connection.

Most people prefer to check if the site has a green lock before entering their payment details. This is because the lock confirms that theircredit card information and payment information are kept safe. In turn, this encourages them to shop from the store and trust the site.

HTTPS also helps verify that you are the owner of the domain. At times, individuals may create replicas of your website and divert traffic in order to steal from you. By seeingthe green lock in the URL, users can confirm that your site is a legitimate business. Another benefit of HTTPS is data integrity. Hackers can intercept connections and tamper the data transmitted from your server. In the worst case scenario, the client’s sensitive personal and financial information won’t be sent to you, but to the hacker. Again, both of these scenarios can be avoid with an HTTPS connections.

Although, it’s not just customers who prefer HTTPS, but Google too.

The search giant launched the HTTPS ranking boost, wherein sites that had the “https” portion in their first five characters of the URL,received a small ranking boost. This migration from HTTP to HTTPS marks Google’s first step to increase security on the web. The company announced that features version of Chrome may label HTTP pages as “not secure” in Incognito mode. HTTP pages may also be labeled with a red triangle in the browser to better inform users about the connection’s lack of security.

While HTTPS is not an absolute requirement yet, it is an important ranking factor for ecommerce stores. Since the stores processes confidential client confirmation and financial details, it’s important that these sites can be trusted.

How Can You Get HTTPS?

To start your site’s migration to a secure connection, you must first obtain an SSL Certificate from a Certificate of Authority. The certificate verifies that a trusted party (i.e. the Certificate of Authority) has classified your site aslegitimate and secure. One of the top providers of SSL certificates is Namecheap.

You can purchase and activate your SSL certificate or we can do that for you. The process is technical, but we can guide you each step of the way.

We reached Brighton at around 19:00 on Thursday Evening, beer in hand (which was needed after the three hour journey and two changes to get to Brighton). I wish I could tell you that we partied all night at the beach front with the freshers who were out exploring the city, but the truth is we went for a curry and headed back to the hotel.

Waking up on the Friday to our Seaview was a great start to the day, being from Birmingham we rarely see beaches (we got a little bit too excited). So sitting on the balcony of our hotel room, with coffee in hand the wind in our hair, we soaked up the last bit of the summer sun.

Okay, enough about us and our weird obsession with beachfronts. Brighton SEO rocked, and take this from a ex-intern who three months ago had a limited knowledge of the digital marketing industry.

We first went to the Online PR talk which focused on various different aspects of the art, such as how to package your news story, the trick to building high quality links through newsworthy content and how to target journalists with news stories.

Highlight 1:Shannon McGuirk focused on “News Hooks: what are they and how can you make the most of them in your digital PR and link building strategies?”

In this talk Shannon shared her 5 point checklist on how to create a great story that both audiences and journalists want to read.

Timeliness: This can be anything from awareness days to understanding what is happening in the news. Content always needs to be relevant and planned in advance to deliver results. Be sure to not tie the content in 100% as this content could be used repeatedly for different events.

Shannon used the example of a drinking campaign she worked on which showed the top ‘booziest’ countries. This campaign could be used just after the Christmas and New Year festivities as well as for St. Patricks Day (3 very drink fuelled events).

Credibility: As expected people want opinions from knowledgeable and powerful people, but this isn’t always possible and is generally budget dependant. Shannon shared insight on how to get credible opinions without breaking the bank.

There are various charities with spokespeople that are readily available to comment (either free of charge or for a donation). Furthermore, she emphasised the need to use the people around you. If your brother in law or old university friend is a doctor and you are working on a health campaign, then pull in some favours, don’t be shy!

Prospecting: When it comes to packaging your story you need to be realistic about who would be interested. Many agencies and companies will build a journalist database of between 200-300 journalists, they will know very little about the journalist and just send out a story hoping that at least one of them will pick it up. But is this really effective? Well, apparently not (and I have to say I agree) Shannon suggested that instead you should build a database of around 50 journalists.

Each journalist on your database should have a profile, so you know their likes and dislikes, how they liked to be pitched to and what their last movement was on social media. You could even go as far as to see whether they are a dog person or a cat person. This way your stories can be tailored to certain journalists and they will be more likely to pick it up. Remember quantity isn’t always everything.

Tension: While everyone says any publicity is good publicity, this isn’t necessarily true. Your content will always either approve or disapprove other content that is out there, so can be considered as slightly controversial, but no worries, as long as it is monitored closely and isn’t too controversial then it will be considered as positive disruption. And positive disruption is good disruption helping you to get your brand out of there.

Be Different: Your content needs to be different! No one wants to keep reading the same content over and again (unless you’re featured in it), so while you need to be timely and get in on the action of awareness days and seasonal events, put your own spin on it, come up with something that nobody has even thought about.

I found Stacey’s talk was very interesting. She noted the change in the search landscape with an increase in voice search through phones and other devices. It is predicted that due to this change, companies should try to be positioned in the top 3 search engine results if they wish to stand a chance in the voice search landscape.

This isn’t the only change either, more and more people are searching on various platforms such as Amazon and Ebay so companies are facing more pressure to be relevant on these platforms as well. No pressure, then.

Stacey explained how companies need to move their focus away from trying to solely drive organic sales but instead be aware of what consumers want before they start looking. This consists of scrapping a small report and instead creating a 20-30 page document that tells you everything you need to do about what consumers are searching. This more in-depth analysis will help your company not only rise through the ranks but be relevant to what people are looking for.

How do we do this?

Well first think about triggers, how will your product benefit the customer? Stacey used the example of a broken washing machine:

How to find your triggers? Through a short and sweet survey.

These triggers can then be turned into keywords, which you can test out in tools such as Soovle, Answer the public and so on. Through these tools you can see how your potential consumers think when they are searching for certain products. Handy isn’t it? Even if those consumers aren’t buying now they may do in the future and it is better that they think of you when they do.

Second step, who is the market leader? Go onto Amazon click on their products and filter out all other reviews except for the 5* ones and put the information into a tool like Wordcloud. You need to figure out what makes people give products 5* reviews and what elements your product also has. This can then be incorporated into your own strategy.

Now it is time for the creative and fun part, experimenting! Play around with different keywords in your page titles and landing pages and monitor the progress through good old Google Analytics. This way you can see what works and what doesn’t. But remember nothing is ever a quick job and it is constantly changing, so keep updating and monitoring your strategy.

Stacey reminded us that no matter whether you are a traditional marketer or a digital one, audience is key!

Highlight 3:Dawn Anderson on “Generational Cruft in SEO. There is Never a ‘New Site’ When There’s History”

Dawn talked about a part of SEO that is rarely touched upon, Cruft, more specifically Generational Cruft. She spoke about the ideology that more is best. However, in reality, when it comes to user generated content, as with most things, sometimes less is more.

Similar to your Mum in an argument, Google never forgets. Dawn touched on the need to be careful when it comes to creating URLs and low quality content pages as they will never fully disappear and will creep up on you when you least expect it. URLs are there forever so you need to have a full picture when it comes to the history of your site.

XML Sitemaps are your best friend when it comes to Generational Cruft. XML Sitemaps indicate to Google the content and architecture of your site, so Google can better understand the page and content of your website, increasing the chance of these pages being indexed and regularly crawled.

If you want to read more on Generation Cruft, you can see Dawn’s slides here.

To summarise, the overall message and thinking at this years Brighton SEO was, always think long term!

Find this information useful and want to find out how SEO services and PPC services could work for you and your business? We’re here and happy to help.

Mobile Site Speed

The last couple of years have seen an enormous increase in mobile search. In fact, Google reports that over 50 percent of search is done via mobile. Similarly, SA and Thrive Analytics found that 60 percent of users used mobile devices when searching for local information. And, with the increasing demand for mobile search, comes the need for speedy mobile pages.

Surveys have found that users will abandon a mobile site if it doesn’t load by three seconds. Similarly, a study found that if a page doesn’t load by 400 milliseconds, users would become impatient. But it’s not just users who want sites to load fast, Google thinks the same way too.

The search giant takes mobile site speed into account when ranking sites. It launched the Accelerate Mobile Page initiative, a new open-source framework that enables pages to load at lightning-quick speed, by making pages have lighter data.

“Clearly, AMP takes speed to a point of extreme,” Richard Gingras, Google’s senior director, said in an interview. “So, obviously we look to leverage that. Again, it is only one signal. AMP doesn’t mean adopt AMP and get a massive boost in search ranking. That is not the case. All of the other signals need to be satisfied as well. But without question speed matters. If we had two articles that from a signaling perspective scored the same in all other characteristics but for speed, then yes we will give an emphasis to the one with speed because that is what users find compelling.”

While AMP isn’t an absolute requirement, it will be a standard soon enough. Once mobile users experience fast loading times for top sites, they’ll expect other sites to match it too. Failing to keep up will lead to a decrease in rankings and search traffic.

In the future, Google may even demand mobile sites to load after less than one second. Not surprisingly, the company wants sites to load faster to improve user experience. However, mobile sites currently load at an average of four seconds at present.

While increasing mobile site speed is by no means an easy feat, Google has introduced mechanisms that would allow users to improve their performance. It introduced Google Pagespeed Insights—an online tool that can determine mobile site speed. All users need to do is to type the URL of their site in the search bar and “Click Analyze.”

Google then rates the site’s speed out of a hundred points. As long as the site has a score of above 50, then it’s good. The page takes 2 seconds or less to load. In contrast, a lower score implies that the site needs some work. The good news is that along with the site speed, users are shown tips on what they can do to increase page speed and optimize their site.

Improving your mobile site speed is a must if you want to stay ahead in Google’s rankings. Fortunately, as long as you know how to determine mobile site speed, you can speed up your site yourself.

Let’s say you’re on a budget.
You don’t have enough money to spend on social media ads, PPC or print ads. So, how are you going to generate traffic? How are you going to boost your landing pages? How are you going to generate new customers?
The simple answer is SEO-friendly content. Here are the reasons why it works:

SEO-Friendly Content Attracts Visitors

Users won’t choose your site if they don’t see it first. In fact, Gravita sampled over 8 million clicks and found that more than 94% users clicked on a first page result, while less than 6% clicked the second page. Not surprisingly, users were attracted to the first links that they could find.

But how can you make it on the top of Google’s search results?

One way is to optimize your content for search engines. Determine the information that your target market wants, get your technical SEO right, and choose relevant keywords and phrases carefully.

Why does this matter?
Search ranking is an indicator of your sites credibility and relevance. Sites that are on top of search results are bound to have a good reputation in the industry. They are also guaranteed to have relevant keywords and phrases that match a search query. It’s like a prospect magnet, attracting visitors to your website because you have the information that they want and need.

With SEO-friendly, you’re bound to stay on top and attract visitors to boot! So, if you’re not anywhere near the top, then you’re missing out on a lot!

SEO-Friendly Content Gets Social Shares
Do you regularly post updates on Facebook or Twitter? SEO plays a huge role here. Title tags and meta descriptions are the first thing that people see, read and think before they click your content. It’s important to get them right—to make the best first impression.

For example, let’s say you want to promote your Chinese restaurant in New York. Now you’re going to need to figure out a way to increase visitors without going a little too over the budget. You found out that one way you can do this is to get inbound links and conduct keyword research. So, you write guest posts for food blogs and try to rank for terms like “best Chinese restaurants in New York” or where to eat Chinese food in New York City.”

But… it doesn’t end there.
Once you publish your posts online, you need to figure out a way to encourage visitors to choose your brand. With a relevant title and meta description, you can deliver a statement and make a powerful marketing message that is consistent with your business’ objectives.

These examples show how SEO-friendly content is inherently tied to your marketing. Since it is integrated with your business’ goals and strategies, it can entice users to remember your business when they make purchase decisions.

Conclusion
SEO-friendly content is important. That being said, keep in mind that it won’t immediately boost your business. SEO is a long-term strategy, but its end result is definitely worth it.

Content helps businesses increase brand awareness, reach sales goals, acquire leads and nurture leads at the same time. So, you’d be hard-pressed to find a business that isn’t into content marketing.

But now that everyone has the ability to publish content online, there’s a lot more competition. In fact, millennials now have an attention span of 5 seconds. Once they see an ad, they’ll quickly move on. So, how would you get loyal customers? How do you make people pay attention to your content?

One of the best ways businesses can set themselves apart is through consistency.

Why Consistency Matters?

Google Rewards Consistency

Google regularly crawls your site for fresh content. If it discovers that you publish frequently, then you’ll rank even better.

Hence, you’ll get more traffic to your website!

It Builds Engagement

Consistency leads to repeat traffic from visitors too!

If you publish content frequently, then your audience stays engaged. They’ll get into the habit of coming back to your website and social media channels. They’ll also regularly engage with your emails, blog posts or tweets. And…if they like what they see, then they’ll share it with their own network too!

Not only does this increase brand awareness, but it can also do wonders for your online traffic.

It Establishes Credibility

Popular websites such as Hubspot, Moz, Entrepreneur and Crazy Egg— have one thing in common—consistency.

They publish the latest industry trends and post new content everyday. As a result, if viewers want to learn about something, then they’ll likely type the relevant keywords together with the name of the publication on the search bar. This leads a site’s traffic to skyrocket to unimaginable heights.

But that’s not all….

Consistency is associated with expertise. The more content that you have is associated with the expertise that you have to offer. In fact, a good blog can entice B2Bs and B2C’s to think about buying your product or service. After all, they won’t think of your brand as a mere “nobody”, instead they’ll see an expert that they can trust.

This means that you get the best of both worlds.

You increase your site’s traffic and you generate more sales.

It Increases Inbound Links

Now, that your site is credible, engaging and #1 on Google’s search results; you’re more likely to get inbound links too!

Bloggers and thought leaders are more likely to reference and link back to your site, when you have a lot of social proof. They’re also more likely to find your content, if it’s near the top of Google’s search results.

Conclusion

Never forget the key thing that matters—consistency.

Publishing high-quality content on a regular basis, inspires readers to check out your site on a regular basis, as well. When these readers are impressed, they’re more likely to promote your content and help boost your search traffic. And, as your popularity skyrockets, then your SEO will skyrocket too!

Did we miss anything? Do you want to share more benefits of posting content consistently? Let us know by commenting down below!

Much like many of the Google Products over the last 12 months, there has been serious overhaul of the Google Search Console or as it was formerly known Google Webmaster Tools.

If you haven’t logged in recently you’re in for a pleasant surprise and I would recommend you go and take a look pretty quick to see what little treats Google has decided to start sharing with us. Whilst I won’t go through all the new features right now I would like to share a couple of my favourites.

Search Traffic

The first thing to strike you in the new admin panel is the slick new look and feel which is becoming familiar across most of Google’s Products now. It has clean, angular lines with no over-bearing features allowing you to concentrate on what’s important. Navigation is no longer a stressful event, you can skip between categories in the left hand menu and with the seamless integration with other Google profiles it now allows you to jump around numerous accounts and profiles, particularly handy if you’re agency managing numerous client accounts.

A few years ago the dreaded “not provided” started appearing in our Google Analytics accounts and Ecommerce Directors all over the country started getting grey hairs as Google started making their lives very difficult. Not provided started replacing the priceless keyword information that would show us how people were finding your site and which landing page they were finding as result, this is crucial in understanding whether your site is optimised and doing the job you’re expecting. Losing it from the free version of Google Analytics was a hard pill to swallow…

However this information can now be found again having re-emerged in the Google Search Console. If you go to the Search Traffic section, under Search Analytics you’ll find lots of juicy information on what keywords are your driving your traffic. And it doesn’t just stop there…. Google now joins all the dots for you in tying up Impressions, Click Through Rate and Average Position all in one handy dashboard. You can select custom date ranges, compare year and year and you can slice and dice the data by Page, Country and Device.

For me it’s my number one stop of reviewing my business’s search visibility to ensure we’re tracking in the right direction.

Crawl

My next stop takes me to the crawl section. It amazes me how clients I see not realise the pretty important step of uploading a sitemap to Google. I know Google is getting in to all sorts of funky AI but its search algorithm is still essentially a robot, you need to tell it to do stuff! By submitting a sitemap regularly you are telling Google you not only care about your site but also telling it what’s new to your site and what it should go take a look at. Plus it only takes a minute so why wouldn’t you?

When the results come back you need to check that the ‘urls indexed’ matches the number you know to be in your site, if it’s less you need to work out why. The more pages you have indexed, the more keywords and traffic you are likely to drive to your site. By using a “Site:[domain]” search in Google you can then see if the number of pages returned in the results matches the pages indexed. They’ll be some minor differences and this is to be expected but if wholesale chunks of content are being missed you need to find out why. It could be that Google doesn’t like some of the content on a certain page or that you have something in your Robots.txt that is preventing Google from crawling it. I once found a command in a client’s robots file preventing the entire blog section of the site from being crawled, around 100 pieces of content and no one knew how long it had been like that. Often the most dangerous of things are lying hidden behind the scenes and you need to take a look under the bonnet every now and again.

There are lots of other cool features, such as Structured Data, Rich Cards and Data Highlighter which I’ll talk about in a future blog. Google is known for quietly making small but revolutionary updates without telling anyone about it and it certainly feels like the Search Console is in one of those zones at the moment and getting lots of attention from the Google Engineers, so it’s a good place to be checking out fairly regularly at the moment.

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